FINDINGS II
Proper
15 - C - August 15, 2010
Luke 12: 49-56
Luke 12: 49-56 Jesus said (to his
disciples): "I have come to bring fire to the earth and I wish it were already kindled. I am awaiting a baptism, and I
am under a lot of stress until it is perfected. What? Do you think I am here to
bring peace on Earth? No, I tell you. I am here to be a divider. From here on
out five people in a household will be divided three against two and vice
versa: father against son, son against father; mother against daughter,
daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law; daughter-in-law
against mother-in-law." Jesus then spoke to the crowd saying, "When you see a
cloud rising in the west, you figure that it is going to rain, and it does. And
when you see the south wind blowing, you figure that it's going to get hot, and
it does. You are just acting when you say you don't know what to do next! You
know how to predict the weather, so why can't you figure out what's going on
around you right now?" (Translated and paraphrased by Harry
T. Cook)
 By Harry T. Cook
8/9/10
RUBRIC
From the call to be ready for the new dispensation (last
week's FINDINGS II), to an actual preview of its actual advent. Jesus said he
did not come to bring peace on Earth, which is not what the heavenly host is
said to have proclaimed at Luke 2:14. And what fire is this that he shall bring
instead? Can it be the fire that Luke depicts dancing upon the heads of the
apostolic company at Pentecost (Acts 2:3)? Is it the fire of purification (Malachi
3:2b) or the fire of damnation? Is the fire of baptism, not the one at the
Jordan but at Calvary? What is going on here?
WORKSHOP
Just as the coming of the new dispensation or rule of God
requires an interim ethic (see Luke 12:32ff), so it has the potential to divide
because it puts such radical demands on those of the "little flock" who would
receive it. There will be division because each person will respond to the new
dispensation differently. All do not, in fact, divest of possessions and give
alms. They do not necessarily concede that such a radical gesture is required
by the acceptance of the new rule. Thus division.
It does not take much imagination to see that division must
have been rending the late first century communities of Jesus Judaism. The
farther away from synagogue Judaism the Jesus movement became, the more divisive
and conflicted things must have become. People had to choose one or the other, and
did choose. Choice is sometimes a baptism. Baptism should always be a choice.
The new dispensation of love (or rule of God) cannot only
bring peace; it is peace, but peace with a price. The ethic of the new
dispensation is communal in nature; it is not capitalism but socialism. It does
not, cannot tolerate vast chasms of disparity in wealth and poverty, of satiety
and need. That is why the rule or dispensation, which can bring peace, brings
division. That seems to be why the rule does not come on its own, even at the
behest of a deity. Human will can and will keep it at bay. That may be the
ultimate tragedy of human existence.
The Gospel of Thomas may shed some light here, even in its
strangeness. Thomas 82 reads: "Jesus said, 'He who is near me is near the fire,
and he who is far from me is far from the rule (or kingdom).'" This makes the
point that the rule or dispensation involves whatever "fire" represents. An old
Protestant hymn by a Methodist bishop named Ralph Spaulding Cushman (1879-1960)
begins this way: "Set us afire, Lord; stir us, we pray." That lyric may capture
well what Luke meant here by "fire."
The address to the crowd reveals some impatience on the part
of Luke's Jesus with the people's inability or unwillingness to discern the
meaning of the signs of their own time. Jesus is depicted as insisting that the
signs of the time are as revealing of outcomes as the winds. Thomas 91 puts it
this way: "You assess the look of the sky and earth . . . but you do not know
how to assess this season.
The problem is the difference between "chronos" and
"krisis." It is not the passage of time and its exquisite measurement that
should concern us -- the humdrum lock-step procession of minute-to-minute,
hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week routines, but rather the conditions, and
potential of a season in which change is in the air, when anything can happen,
when time is pregnant with the possibility for good or ill.
Part of interpreting the present time is actually seizing
the initiative. The new dispensation or rule of God has been given. It is for
those to whom it has been given to receive it and live under it, to live out
its ethic. The correct interpretation of time and season that is always upon us
is to open the eyes to its presence and to embrace it for all it is and we are
worth.
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
Americans are being warned of impending changes, some of
which are thought to be positive, others negative. Several economists are
predicting a fiscal collapse if the George W. Bush tax cuts are allowed to
expire at the end of 2010 as taxes at every level then rise in the midst of a
lingering recession. So that's in the air.
The oil spill off the coast of Louisiana together with the
growing unrest in the Middle East between Israel and its Muslim neighbors is a
two-edged sword for those concerned about war and oil. It's a sign that is hard
to miss.
The widening disparity between the super-rich and the poor
and getting-poorer is a fact that merits attention along with the certainty
that the poor will suffer most from environmental degradation.
Why then is so much of so many churches' energy being spent
on trying to constrict women's reproductive rights or to prevent so-called gay
marriage? That women wish to make decisions about their own bodies and that
people of the same sex wish to settle into marriage with one another are not
baleful signs that point to global degradation. But they serve to keep us from
paying to attention to the way the winds are blowing and from which quarters.
"You know how to predict the weather," Luke's Jesus said,
"So why can't you figure out what's going on around you right now?" And maybe
even attempt to deal effectively with it.
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